I wrote all of this myself, today, because I like to write. The story I'm sharing below is paraphrased and also obfuscated a bit for the obvious reasons.
I love making videos and I just finished a fun one for people who are wondering whether now is the time to learn AI. If that's you, go have a watch. In 30-40 minutes you'll be up to speed with what you need to know.
As I was making it, however, I kept thinking "do I really need to make this right now? I mean... I think most people get it."
I love it when I'm overly optimistic. Seriously! I don't want to become that person who is always obsessing on fire exits and wondering what medications they might run out of on a trip. I like to think about the good things, like "I hope it will rain so I can see this gorgeous beach in a different light" or something.
This time, with my enterprise meathead, however, I was being overly optimistic and I knew it. He is one of my client's lead engineers and let's just say he wasn't happy with me, nor what I was telling his boss. I want to share this experience with you because I think you might be working for someone like Jeff.
"Jeff", of course, isn't his real name. This story is real, however, but I'm going to dull a few edges and details for obvious reasons.
Perhaps You Could Explain...
The call I was on was a very typical enterprise-y client call: the manager was pitting me against his lead engineer to see how I could handle myself. Either I would be proven a snake oil fool, or I would give the manager ammunition to ... do whatever he needed to do with his lead engineer.
The situation was simple: the client called me in to help "operationalize" his team. This is what I do now and I love it. I love to see people's eyes when they get it, when they see that the thing they love is shipping and making a difference and, that for most people, code was a means to that end.
There is a downside, however, and it's that this job is mostly psychological. The AI part is straightforward: the tooling is simple to learn, the process is even simpler. The payoff is huge, but then there's the letting go and shifting of process. That's the hard part.
No one wants to hear that the days of them writing code are done. This isn't going to happen, it's happening right now. Actually, that's not true either: it already happened. I'm just the one that's here making this a reality for you, and I'm happy about that because I don't think I'm an asshole that enjoys watching people suffer.
Quite the opposite. I'm a nice person who's gone through 4 major professional upheavals in his life. This is the 5th. I have empathy about all of this, and I know it feels disorienting and yes, if we focus on what could go wrong, we can paint a pretty bleak future for ourselves.
There's also the good side. The "let's see if we can see the blue sky through the clouds" kind of thing. We have a chance to stay ahead of the coming wave and explore new opportunities for ourselves. There's way too much money in this industry and way too many humans needed; there will always be something we can do.
Anway, back to my story. I was on a Zoom call with my client and his lead engineer Jeff was not having any of my "nonsense" and was pulling out every single trick in the book to get me to admit I was there to make a buck, and that I didn't have any substance behind my words.
Jeff did the typical things, including:
- Interrupting me constantly.
- Talking down to me, while at the same time telling me I was a Microsoft shill trying to push Copilot (which is funny).
- Asking me when the last time I shipped something was, and how big was it, and what was the framework/platform/blah blah blah...
I know the Jeff's of the world very well, and I know the easiest thing to do when they get rolling is to say less, and...
Hand Them a Shovel
At Microsoft we used to say "handing out a rope" when a person had a good idea or challenged someone else. The idea being, of course, you're taking your fate in your own hands and you also expected to carry out the consequences of that fate.
My buddy Jeff enjoyed talking and I could tell he worked with a staff that was afraid of him. I knew, also, that he took my silence as deference, and that he was "winning" the conversation. Which is fine with me, I didn't see it as a competition.
There are good endings to encounters like this. Sometimes a person will talk themselves in circles and eventually get to a point where they say "Oh - I think you just said this didn't you?" At which point I typically give them an out and say "well with different words I suppose, but I like yours better."
That's not what Jeff did. Jeff insisted that he knew how to use Claude Code, that he understood context windows, token use, orchestration patterns, how agents work, what should be a skill vs. an agent, and finally (this is the best one), he rattled off 3 of the top Claude Code plugins that he "used a ton of times before".
"Nice" was my reply. "I like each of those - superpowers might be my favorite - but I also find that it's someone else's idea of orchestration and not-"
"I don't need anyone's idea of orchestration with shitty AI. Look bro, I know how to write good code. AI can't write code like I can, so as far as I'm concerned it's not even close to being ready to use."
At this point I offered to help Jeff hone his Claude skills library, see if there were ways we could templatize his preferences, etc. I'll summarize by saying he wasn't having any of it, ending with "AI will never write code as good as I can."
Ah, there it is. One of the things I learned with Shotokan is that there are no offensive moves, only defensive. Block, then counter. I think most martial arts are this way, and I think having the discipline to stay focused until your opponent strikes is a really good discipline to have. If neither of you strikes, that's the best possible outcome!
Unfortunately that didn't happen with Jeff. He made his move, and I made mine:
Well, Jeff, I'll take that bet. I can guarantee you and your boss here that I'll produce far better code with Claude than you can write.
Boom. I Said It.
Yeah I did. I really did say that. This served two functions: to get some space to speak, and to knock Jeff off his stride for a second. He was being aggressive and getting angry, and aggressive and angry people don't listen very well.
"Oh seriously. Wow someone thinks a lot of themselves. OK cowboy, how are you going to do that?"
Because I'm going to ship this code, Jeff. You haven't shipped anything in the last 4 months, and I'm going to help your team ship tomorrow. It might only 80% to your satisfaction, but 80% of something...
Yeah I said that too. With a smile on my face even! The neat thing is that Jeff thought I completely over-extended myself on this so decided to hand me my rope, with what he thought was a nice, final retort: "Look, I know I could ship a lot faster with AI, but I'm not about to ship crap."
That's when his boss took over.
"Umm Jeff. Explain what you just said to me. You know you could ship faster?"
I'll spare you the circular backpedaling. Jeff did what people like Jeff do: kept talking until his ego got in the way and buried him.
It Doesn't Need to be a Battle
If you're reading this and finding yourself feeling a bit for Jeff, I get it. I don't want to fight anyone and honestly getting into conversations like this is the worst part of this gig. It feels like 2006 all over again when I was trying to convince the ASP.NET community that unit tests were a good thing and that yes, ASP.NET MVC was a better framework for that exact reason. That... wasn't fun.
There really is no debate to be had, no argument to engage in. The changeover has come and gone and your boss is, at this very moment, engaging with people just like me to come in and refocus you and your team. I like to think this is a good thing.
There is a lot to be positive about here. Think about the app you're working on and how it can change people's lives for the better. They get to use that app faster, with fewer bugs. You get to work on features that were years out, tomorrow!
We, as an industry, have no choice but to find the blue skies in all of this, and they are there. You can't fight the time and tide, and the AI tide has come in. Let's get in a boat and see what the shoreline looks like now. Everything has changed, and for some it will be for the worse, for others, who decide to take their fate into their own hands, their career will be what they make of it.
Thanks for reading, as always! And yes, I promise, every word of this post was written by hand, by me.
Rob
